goddess

Before apocryphally rolling out of the carpet and stepping into legend, Cleopatra (69 BC-30 BC) already had a storied past. The 21-year-old and her 13-year-old brother-husband Ptolemy XIII (62 BC-47 BC) ruled together for nearly two years before said brother, influenced by overly ambitious advisors, banished Cleopatra from Alexandria. Prudently using her mastery of the Egyptian language—the first Ptolemy to do so in the nearly 300-year-old dynasty—Cleopatra raised an army to defeat her brother, Ptolemy XIII. It was only shortly thereafter that she had the legendary encounter with Caesar. Yet most of what has been written about Cleopatra concerns her entanglement with ancient Rome—that is to say, it was written from a decidedly biased Roman perspective. Time and again, we